Transgender & Transsexual Issues, Information, Advice, & Opinion

Ask Matt Monday: When Can I Stop Explaining?

A reader writes: “I am lucky enough to have a number of people in my life who, though they ‘cannot understand’ my experiences, are truly empathetic and supportive.

“But I have hit a wall with a couple of people – not in terms of the reality of gender dysphoria, but in the extent of it. This results in a lot of conversations along the lines of ‘I support your transition, but I don’t understand why you have to do X,’ or ‘I want you to be happy, but I don’t see how Y would make you happier,’ or ‘Why do you have to do this now?’

“Is it even constructive to try to bring these people along with you on your transition? When they claim to want to participate, but only on their own terms, I wonder if I’m doing anyone any good in trying to push them to empathize.”

There are huge differences among the concepts of experiencing something, having a general understanding of it, and simply accepting that it exists. When I speak to classes or groups, I often say, “It’s very difficult for people who have never experienced this to understand it. But you don’t have to experience it yourself, or even understand it, to accept that it exists.”

It sounds like the people you are referring to accept the fact that being trans exists and that you are experiencing it, but, as you say, they are accepting it on their terms. They are asking you to explain yourself and to defend your decisions and your path to their satisfaction.

The problem is that they will never be satisfied, because they haven’t experienced what you are experiencing, and they are not willing to simply accept the fact that your situation exists in the way that it does, and you have to do the things that you are doing, for no other reason than because you say so.

And that’s honestly the only explanation that you have to give.

Of course, it’s nice to fully explain things to others, especially those who are very close to you, and hope that they will understand as much as possible. But when you get to a point where others are asking – or demanding – that you defend your experience or provide them with explanations that they will “get,” then you’re spinning your wheels and going nowhere.

So my answer to these people would be: “Of course you don’t. You’re not going through this and you’re not me.”

“I support your transition, but I don’t understand why you have to do X.” “Of course you don’t. You’re not going through this and you’re not me. You don’t have to understand it. You just have to accept that it is.”

“I want you to be happy, but I don’t see how Y would make you happier.” “Of course you don’t. You’re not going through this and you’re not me. You don’t have to see it. You just have to accept that it is.”

And then there’s the dreaded “Why do you have to do this now?”

You could always be a little snarky and say, “If not now, when? If not me, who?”

But you might just want to say, “Because I do.”

These answers will not satisfy them. But apparently nothing you have said has satisfied them. And you don’t have to justify yourself or anything that you are doing – to anyone.

It’s best if you can spend some time and work with the people who are closest to you and mean the most to you in life, but there comes a time when even that gets to be too much. And for people you are okay letting go of – well, sometimes it’s time to let go.

You can try one final time, if you want. You can say, “I’ve told you what I’m doing and I’ve told you why I’m doing it. You don’t have to understand it. You just have to accept that it is. But I can’t be any more clear with you than I have been, and I’m no longer willing to try to justify what I’m doing or to explain it any further.

“There are plenty of great books and websites out there that provide information, and I will direct you to them if you are interested. Other than that, I’m done. Now let’s go to lunch and you can explain to me why you went back to that loser for the fifth time after the way s/he treated you (or why you insist on wearing green nail polish, or why you voted the way you did in the last election, or why you always wear that ugly tie, or whatever).”

Honestly, there are people who will do you more harm than good in your transition (or just in your life in general). Identify those people and figure out a way to move on from them. Life (and transition) is complicated enough without having to justify or defend your every move.

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It took me a few years to realize that the problem was not “other people and their acceptance/understanding” but my own acceptance of their reality. The only people with even a chance of truly understanding are those who transition and even those experiences aren’t a guarantee because there are many differences within the transitioning population.

I now accept “others” for their reality. I have 3 very simple classifications for them. I call these 1, 2 and 3. 1 is friends. 2 is the “in betweens” and 3 is “outta my lifers” (otherwise know as the “can’t handle its”. I have found that these are not static because people I know have frequently moved between these categories but that typically takes time. The movement can be in either direction and it stings a bit when someone moves from a 2 to a 3 but when that happens I don’t get heartburn because I just accept them as they are.

So my point is that acceptance is a 2 way street. If you want it then you must also give it. Besides peace of mind doing that will save you a fortune in Rolaids.

One final point. People I have met along the way or post transition have it a lot easier on the acceptance meme than people I have known all my life simply because no memories of me are imprinted on their minds. That makes the “long timers” who still keep me in their lives truly wonderful and amazing people. They are very precious.

I had similar with an aunt when I went for a family wedding, when I arrived she gave me the speech about you’ll always be by the end of the weekend she was using the new name even when I wasn’t in earshot.

I’ve also found that sometimes the people you least expect to be accepting are, and those you think will be, aren’t.

I have a friend whom I used to be very close to. When I first told all my friends I’m genderqueer, the first thing he did was “oh yeah, I had a friend who used to be a man and is a woman now, and I was okay with that”. So I thought he’d understand how to be a supportive friend. I was mistaken.

When we got to talking about my transition, the first thing he did was ask me how I know. So I asked him how he knows he’s a man (always a fun question to ask cis people). He said “penis”. What about if he got into an accident where that was removed. Oh, well then he wouldn’t be a man anymore, he says. Um… OK, so I can’t really follow that line of thought, because it’s the exact opposite of my experiences.

For the next few months after that, whenever we’d talk about gender, he’d keep demanding of me that I define “man” and “woman” and “genderqueer” and any other genders that would come up. And if I couldn’t find a definition that fit everyone who identifies that way, it wasn’t good enough. I kept explaining “a man is someone who says he’s a man, that’s it”, but nope, that couldn’t possibly be it, he insisted, it’s to vague. Instead, he took this as proof that there’s no such thing as gender, only sex. That because gender doesn’t exist, I’m wrong to attempt to change my gender without changing my sex first.

I finally stopped talking with him (I know it seems like I should have dropped him right away, but he wasn’t always such a jerk) after I realized that any conversation which involved my gender identity would be immediately derailed into a conversation about how to help him determine his own gender identity. Yup, that’s right, HIS. Mr. Penis would bemoan his supposed agender interior and lament how people only seemed to see him for his masculine exterior. The same exterior which he still continued to claim was what defines him as a man!

I have better things to do than to expose myself to perpetual emotional assault from someone who claims to accept me for who I am.

To contrast with someone who has always been there for me: When I announced my name change to everyone, my boyfriend and I were split up at the time. But even still, he never demanded explanations (even when confused he would frame it as his shortcoming not mine), and only ever asked what he could do to support me. It brought us closer together over the next several months, and we’re now happily living together. He considers himself to be exclusively heterosexual, but he never feminizes me or forces me to perform heterosexuality for him, even during sex. He’s my strongest ally.

In summary: it’s not always easy, but you’ll know when it’s time to let go or when to hold on tight.

“I realized that any conversation which involved my gender identity would be immediately derailed into a conversation about how to help him determine his own gender identity.”

I have found that contact with trans people (or queer people, or people with disabilities or whatever) can cause some people to feel challenged in their own identities. They start obsessing about that other person, and can’t just let it be. With all these people, after some years, there was always some hidden thing about themselves that they had a problem with and the trans person was only the trigger. It’s best to just keep a slight distance and wait. And don’t take things personally, they are just confused people ;-)

I can relate – my partner had a LOT of trouble accepting or understanding my need to transition, until after about 2 years (of hard work and many extremely difficult conversations) he realized/admitted that he is also transgendered. A lot of it was jealousy – ‘I don’t want you to transition because if you’re read as male, by comparison I’ll be read as feminine.’
it didn’t help that we both were rationalizing feeling male as something all lesbians feel – he held on tight to that identity because it was (in his mind) something other than girl – so my challenging that was inevitably challenging his identity as well, something he simply was not ready for yet.

[…] A reader writes: "I am lucky enough to have a number of people in my life who, though they 'cannot understand' my experiences, are truly empathetic and supportive. "But I have hit a wall with a couple of people – not in terms of the reality of gender dysphoria, but in the extent of it. This results in a lot of conversations along the lines of 'I support your transition, but I don't understand why you have to do X,' or 'I want you to be happy, but … Read More […]

Good stuff. I had a vegetarian friend who, when shocked people asked her “What DO you eat??” would always respond “CHOCOLATE” because she had no interest in explaining her whole journey to someone who didn’t immediately ‘get it’.

I used to have a lot of trouble answering those questions because I didn’t know what to say, since I didn’t know “why” or “how” myself. So after trying to give the standard explanations (what I’ve heard from others trying to explain) I decided to be honest.

I usually say something like this:

“I actually don’t know WHY I need it. But I spent 26 years trying to understand “why” – then I realised I didn’t need to know. I already knew WHAT I needed, and that’s more important. So the moment I stopped asking myself “but why?”, I started transitioning.”

Most people find that very confusing, and it takes a lot of courage to do it for the first time. But it works on most people, and it makes it very easy to find the trolls.

Even IRL trolls feed on insecurity, and they expect you to deliver “reasons” for them to judge, as if it’s up to them to approve of your identity. If you say that you actually don’t know why and that you don’t find that important (and mean it) – then you’ve ruined their whole argument.

I really needed to read this right now. <3 I honestly just came out in January, and I'm getting a headache from my best friend Krysty. I've been friends with her for *counts* 11-13 years…. something like that… and I knew right away that she was having a hard time with me coming out as trans, even though she refused to say anything but "it's fine." Finally, after some pestering, I got her to admit that she was upset. To which I told her, "That's good! Because if you don't tell me when you're upset or you're confused or you need some help, you're going to end up resenting me. . . and that's not going to help either of us." Then she started asking me questions, which was okay. Then she started accusing me of changing, which was less okay. Then she got in a huge ARGUMENT with me about how DARE I like the color pink now, when I never liked it before. And I had to spend twenty minutes defending my semi~like of the color pink to her…. over something THAT trivial… That kind of pissed me off, even though I was very calm during that argument. I mean everyone changes from year to year, but she's got it in her head that I'm going to up and completely change in a day, so any little change I make seems to be an attack in her mind. I want to be supportive of her troubles with my transition, because we've been friends for so long, but it's getting wearisome explaining every last little thing to her… Plus I'm having enough issues with my parents…. I don't need to be analyzing myself for her benefit on top of that.

Anyway it's really nice to hear that maybe the best thing might be to stop defending myself from attackers and just let them go.

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